Yes, I actually exercised on my last cruise. Now that we’ve gotten that bombshell out of the way, we can move onto talking about one of the strangest sensations at sea: running.
Personally, I prefer to run on a dedicated track or trail rather than a treadmill. For me, there’s something about physically traveling a specific distance that motivates me and gives me the boost I need to go on. In the past I’ve only run around my university’s campus, so I already knew running around the deck of a cruise ship would be odd. Little did I know how odd it would be.
The strangeness of it all began when I left my stateroom in my running shorts, running shoes, an FAU t-shirt, and an iPhone strapped to my arm. This isn’t the look a typical cruise passenger rocks at sea, so it wasn’t a shocker that I got some weird looks from the crew and fellow guests while walking to the upper decks. Next came the stairs. I’m not quitter and I wasn’t about to take an elevator to my workout. This turned out to be a big mistake as I was winded by the time I had finished climbing the 9 decks to the track. Finally, after an adventurous journey to the track, it was time to get moving.
As I began my run, I felt confident in myself and felt good running alongside the sea. I was relaxed and moving at a great pace. Suddenly, I rounded the corner and ran into what felt like a brick wall, but was really the wind blowing from the ocean. I had apparently been running into the wind on the starboard side, but didn’t even think about the potential slowdown that awaited me on the port side. Eventually I powered through, but I had lost a bit of energy. As you can imagine, this pattern of bursts of energy and windy slowdowns continued for numerous laps. Finally, I reached around two miles and threw in the towel. I had performed slightly worse than usual, chalking it up to the addition of ocean winds and running on a steel surface. I felt good though and was happy to have run off a few of the calories I no doubtfully gained earlier in the day.
Was running at sea good for me? Yes. Was it as easy as I have experienced on land? No. Will I continue running at sea? Maybe. In all honesty, I think the stairs onboard gave me more of a workout than running.
One reply on “Running At Sea: An Odd Way To Stay Shipshape”
I ran all through my 20s and 30s….much of those runs on the helicopter flight deck of US Navy destroyers and frigates. The norm averaged nine laps = 1 mile. And, of course, we were running on special, helicopter-grabbing non-skid rough material. If you fell, your knees were toast. These destroyers and frigates averaged around 10,000 tons — about 10% of the size of today’s cruise ships….so we definitely did some rock ‘n rolling. Running was a definite challenge! And, with all that running in tight circles, we had to agree that runners would go clockwise on certain days of the week….and counter-clockwise on other days…..otherwise, we’d all end up lopsided! But I found getting away from the stress of 18-hour/7 days a week work…..getting out in the sea air….working up a good sweat…..watching the waves and listening to the sea….was better than any drug or alcohol could ever be for relaxing and rejuvenating!
PS — I usually ran 5 miles per day around 5 times a week. That comes to 45 laps around the flight deck for a day’s run. Of course, my runs were often interrupted, delayed or cancelled by an incoming helicopter!